Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 12.djvu/414

400, or rather of the whole race of men. We have often called by the name philosophy that portion of truth attained through philosophy, although but partial.

Now, too, what is good in the arts as arts, have their beginning from God. For as the doing of anything artistically is embraced in the rules of art, so also acting sagaciously is classed under the head of sagacity. Now sagacity is virtue, and it is its function to know other things, but much more especially what belongs to itself. And Wisdom being power, is nothing but the knowledge of good things, divine and human.

But "the earth is God's, and the fulness thereof," says the Scripture, teaching that good things come from God to men; it being through divine power and might that the distribution of them comes to the help of man.

Now the modes of all help and communication from one to another are three. One is, by attending to another, as the master of gymnastics, in training the boy. The second is, by assimilation, as in the case of one who exhorts another to benevolence by practising it before. The one co-operates with the learner, and the other benefits him who receives. The third mode is that by command, when the gymnastic master, no longer training the learner, nor showing in his own person the exercise for the boy to imitate, prescribes the exercise by name to him, as already proficient in it.

The Gnostic, accordingly, having received from God the power to be of service, benefits some by disciplining them, by bestowing attention on them; others, by exhorting them, by assimilation; and others, by training and teaching them, by command. And certainly he himself is equally benefited by the Lord. Thus, then, the benefit that comes from God to men becomes known—angels at the same time lending encouragement. For by angels, whether seen or not, the divine power bestows good things. Such was the mode adopted in the advent of the Lord. And sometimes also the power "breathes" in men's thoughts and reasonings, and "puts in"